Att placera företagsinkubation i en Community of Practice - En studie om lärandemiljön i företagsinkubatorer

Sammanfattning: The role of small businesses is fundamentally important for the economic development in countries. Within this context, business incubation is used as an entrepreneurship development instrument to promote and support new firms in the early stage of their existence. However, research in the field tends to disregard the perspectives of incubatee entrepreneurs. The performed investigation is based on interviews with entrepreneurs from two different business incubators at Swedish universities. This study uses a Situated Learning Theory (SLT) as a theoretical framework, to examine the entrepreneur's experience of the learning environment in a business incubator. SLT holds that learning takes place in a Community of Practice (CoP), the incubator in our case, with certain criteria to make it an optimal learning environment. The aim of this study is to investigate, through a conceptual model, whether it is a useful model for incubators to imitate. Moreover, the study seeks to develop or modify the theory of CoP according to the insights of the entrepreneurs. Empirical findings have shown that the studied incubators as learning environments have many similarities to the suggested CoP. They also show, to a higher extent, that the requested elements by the entrepreneurs are more in line with CoP, suggesting it is a helpful guide for business incubation management. Furthermore, the conceptual model has helped us to adjust CoP to fit the business incubation model.